Roopkund Trek – Day 1- Jeep Ride

I have been to Roopkund Himalayan trek recently and getting to the base camp alone will make you travel a lot. We took off from Bangalore to Delhi by flight and traveled overnight by train from Delhi Cant to Kathgodam railway station. It’s good to book flight atleast three months in advance so that you get flight tickets for a very low price (as of this writing). Delhi Cantonment (Cant.) is the nearest railway station and is about 20 minutes by local prepaid taxi from Airport. Locals call it Delhi “Caaaannnnt” and they may not understand when you say Cantonment. We took a sleeper coach and early in the morning we reached Kathgodam railway station, which is close to Nainital (huge mango shaped lake and a hill station) which we planned as a one day trip while coming back from Roopkund trek.

Kathgodam (554 mts, 1818 ft) is the last Indian railway station/stop after which the only option to go further is by cab or by bus. Also, this railway station is the main meeting point for most trekkers as trekkers from here take different routes depending on which trek or location they choose.

Reaching Lohajung (Roopkund base camp)

We took a cab (Sumo or Jeep) from Kathgodam to Lohajung (2350 mts, 7700 ft), the Roopkund base camp which is about 10 to 11 hours of jeep ride with just one or two stops for lunch and a tea break. The jeep ride might cause sickness to some people as the route gains an altitude of almost 2 kms by the time you reach base camp and also too many steep/hair-pin curves along the edge of the river crossing multiple iron bridges. On the way you will find Tea estate at Kausani where you get to see amazing and beautiful view of Himalayas, if the local weather is good or on a clear day. Also, here in this region you will find enough number of hotels or dabas where you can stop for a quick north Indian meals as your lunch.

The landscape here is a bit different if you are used to Southern India. You will only find steep mountains with not many trees and almost dry rivers. Also, most of the slopes in this region are terrace cultivated where they grow wheat, potato etc. Also, as you gain altitude the temperature goes down and can be cooler at night. Beautiful landscape, green colored iron bridges, vertical pine trees, green or golden colored terrace cultivated slopes, landslides, etc. The mountains here are not made of solid rock like how we have in western ghats but looks more like sediments found in the sea bed and landslides are common in this area. We did not have enough time to get down, use tripod and then capture photos but managed to put my head out once in a while to get some amazing landscape shots. Finally reached a small village named Lohajung, which is our Roopkund base camp/ starting point of our trekking after a day long jeep ride.

Managed to capture few shots and videos while on jeep ride. Watch the below video and if you like it please don’t forget to share it and follow me on social media. Let me know what you think about these photos or if you have been to this place then share your experience in the below comments field.